3 Poems by Hosho McCreesh

Caught Between the Boot-heel
And the Cold, Hard Ground…

Goddammit, now
either you
love,

and suffer
for it;

or

you love
nothing,

and
suffer
for
it.

So
it has
to be
love.

____________

The Hell We’ve
Decided We
Can Stand…

She’s gotta be a
prostitute,
this starved thing,
drug-lean as a jackal,
her sunken face painted up,
wearing 1970s Goodwill fashions
thrown out by
a dead doctor’s
dead ex-wife’s
kids.

On the coldest, blankest mornings
there she is on 6th,
cigarette in a gnarled mitt,
smoke mixing with her
frozen breath,
heels clacking,
walking like a
young deputy
trying to impress
the Sheriff.

I can only imagine
where she’s headed.

I imagine offering her a ride

then remember every episode of COPS,
the police saying, “what’s going on here?”
and the sad, poor
whore in the crosshairs
saying, “He’s just
giving me a ride!”
and all the cops
snicker.

So I drive on,
her taut-skinned skull of a face
shrinking in the rearview,
me back to my desk job,
and her to wherever,
each hoping for an easy day
and that we’re actually choosing
the hell we’ve
decided we
can stand.

____________

It’s 12:19, Sunday Night,
Well, Monday Morning I Guess…

And even though I
have to be up early for work,
I can’t sleep,

don’t want to sleep,

don’t want to
miss something,

even though
nothing is
happening.

I lost my paying writing gig.

Found out another book has
just gone out of print.

And I got news today
that my novel was
rejected.

Meaning my life
isn’t going to change.

Meaning I will stay
a small press nobody.

Meaning I’m not sure
I can keep this up,
can’t keep pretending
and trying to be a writer
anymore.

So I write this poem,

shut out the light,

and listen to the
clock tick
down.

from the chap book: A Battle Cry From the Trenches of the American Dream – Hosho McCreesh

The Grandson

My grandfather died
last fall and even though
he made it 83 years
he really never left
WWII. Divorced. Retired as a
security guard for the
Air Force base. Nothing
about his passing will
make its way into the
election-year speeches or
a goddamned Ford truck
commercial & I’m pretty
sure that my mom & my aunts
spent every penny he left
them in 1 morning at the
casino.

 

–editor’s note–this poem goes back to the beginning of McCreesh’s writing

America by Hosho McCreesh

Today at work I learned that
America had been indicted,
Aggravated Burglary and Conspiracy,
for stealing $720 from
a lonely old man.

See, America called him up,
asked if she could come over,
implying something sexual
without coming out and saying it.

“Sure,” the lonely old man said,
“I’ve got a few beers,” and
American said she’d
be right over.

So the old man splashed on
some aftershave, Old Spice,
cracked a couple cans of Modelo,
and waited.

America showed up, smiling nervous,
and sipped at her beer for a few minutes,
before unlocking the front door
letting two men in.

The men scared the old man pretty good,
“Where’s the fucking money, gramps?” they said,
and roughed him up a bit.

The old man looked at America,
“Just tell them,” she said, “these guys
seem crazy!”

So the old man gave it up,
and the thieves ran off with
all his cash.
When the cops showed up,
they asked the old man
how he knew America.

“She would never,” the old man said,
he’d loaned her money before, he said
he’d once given her father a job.
“She would never…”

The cops rolled their eyes
knowing the old fool
had been had.

“Did America know you always carry
so much cash?” the cops asked,
and the old man said nothing.

“How else could the thieves know?”
the cops asked, and even though he
still couldn’t believe it, the old man
admitted that it must’ve been America.

Meanwhile outside, America said
she couldn’t identify the robbers,
that she really wished she could help,
but that she didn’t see their faces,
she didn’t recognize anyone,
that she didn’t know anything.

So the cops made like they were gonna cuff her,
and America started in begging and pleading,
“But my kids!” she said, “my kids are
at home…alone! Please…please,
you can’t arrest me!”
So the cops tacked on more charges,
abandoning a child, two counts,
and America changed her tune,
“It’s not my fault!” she said.
Sure, she did it, “But they put me up to it.
I had no choice! They said they’d
kill me…and my kids!”

So the cops asked her
if she’d rat the guys out,
and she gave them up
faster than the meth goes.

The whole filthy lot were rounded up,
arrested, and no one would say
where the money was.

And when America got her phone call,
it was to some sucker ex-boyfriend,
a recoving addict who now installs
hot water heaters under the table.
“Jezus,” he said, but still he left his job,
pulled his child support money out of an ATM,
and bailed America out two hours later.

“I swear I’ll pay you back,” America said,
“every penny,” then kissed him on the cheek and
took off on him too, went on the lam, telling no one
goodbye, or where she was headed.

It wasn’t until five years later
that America was finally picked up
on the warrant, FTA – failure to appear,
and of course America
had been hiding out
in Las Vegas.
Still, we know how these things go:
the case was dropped,
DA said it wasn’t
“a strong enough case,”
that it didn’t warrant extradition,
that spending taxpayer money wasn’t
“in the best interest of justice,”
because that’s pretty much
how it’s always
gone with
America.

On Poetry, and the Typical American Reader… by Hosho McCreesh

Seventeen syllables? Fuck, even that is too much to ask of them.

In the Naked, Barren Steppes by Hosho McCreesh

…and we sit, like fools,
waiting for
reason and
logic to
prevail,
waiting for
monsters
who live only to
take & argue &
nuzzle up to
moneied crotches,
to look beyond themselves,
look beyond the
idiotic & temporary gains,
& seek out some
higher purpose, some
way forward, some
way to mend & heal
& reconcile the fact that
we are nothing but
a tiny speck
in a warm band of
cosmic light, that
nothing we do will
outlast the Judas sun,
& that our role
— if any —
in this whole
lollapolooza
is to find some
warmth & shelter
in the naked, barren
steppes of our own
mortality,
& figure out
how to best live
with each other & for
what remains of
our silly little
handful of
days.

A Deep & Gorgeous Thirst by Hosho McCreesh

Under normal or sober circumstances a blurb or a book review would follow on a new book not quite out yet or any book by that matter.  In this case after reading over 250 pages of McCreesh’s drunk poems this poem came out…

your buddy hands you
a book of poems
you switch from cheap wine
to guinness and back again
because you are a virgin
because the more you read
the more intoxicated you get
anticipation builds
like your first time
in the back seat
or the tequila whores in juarez
you turn the pages faster
kamikazes lined up
stretch down the bar
until you’re ready to pass out..

but you don’t pass out
you drink another  &
develop a deep
 and gorgeous thirst

____________

…granted not quite a review of his new work published by Artistically Declined Press   but I guess more of a tribute to the style, to  the talent and courage to break away from the artistic boundaries that identified a Hosho Mc Creesh poem in  the past.  There are no labels found here. It is an  unmarked brand.  It is new.  It is fresh as the born date on a bottle of Bud.  This book is breaking ranks.  Drink up.

I thought I was finished with this zine, I guess not–credit McCreesh.

Scot

HOSHO MCCREESH

Through These Terrible Midnights

Goddamn this world.

Goddamn all these people
walking around, trying to
destroy each other.

Goddamn all the things
people think they need
& goddamn all the things
people do to get them.

Goddamn our inventions,
goddamn our ideas,
our man-made borders,
our false gods, &
our so-called prophets.

Goddamn all the things
we use to separate ourselves
from one another
& if this is the world that
you agree with,
the world you want,
then take it, take all of it,
because, what use are you,
really, if you can’t see that
the only reason we are here,
the only things we were
wrought to create are
love & art
& only as a means to
help ourselves or help each other
through these terrible midnights.

And if you aren’t doing that,
or at least trying to do that,
well, goddamn you too,
take this silly, stupid world
& leave me alone
with some bread, some wine,
maybe some decent cheese,
leave me with my little poems,
& my little paintings.
I want no part
in this
because
I am
not
impressed.
____________

Of Freedom, The Pursuit Of Happiness,
& Of The American Dream–
           These, The Fetid Bones;
           This, The Sinister Design;
           These, The Ugly Truths;
           & This, What They Actually Want…

To start you off in the hole,
then somehow convince you to
buy what you don’t need,
spend what you don’t have,
want more than you can ever get,
& watch you die before you can
dig out from under it.

____________

Simply The Impermanence Of Things

I try not to read
too many newspapers
or let too many things
get me down,
I try to remember
that things have
always been hard,
always been bad,
except sometimes
when they aren’t.

I try not to listen to
too many people
who say things like
“just choose to be happy”
which is a cruel thing
to say to someone
who doesn’t feel like
they chose any of this.

I try to remember
the mashed-up bullets
in the dunes off Normandy &
that man has drawn & redrawn
the borders, the lines, the rules,
has vaulted killers & goons into icons
raised statues to them only to
tear them back down later.

I try to remember that
everything crumbles,
everything fails,
simply the impermanence of things,
buildings; gods; ideals;
all built up, torn down, rebuilt,
only more wars & time
to mark the passing,
wars  as common as
a crow, a bursting seed, or a harvest
& time like hours lost to snowfall
beneath slate-grey clouds.

I try to trust in
my own heart,
my own instincts,
try to do the things
that feel important to me,
& try not to get too
distracted by all the rest,
not because I am right or wrong,
but because it feels important.

Sometimes,
it even works,
sometimes
I even
pull it
off.

____________

With But A Few Quiet Tears
To Solemnly Usher Them
Onward, Forward, Everward,
Until The Sun Is No More…

Slam it shut & watch
as the sparrows burst forth
from the tangles of a dying honeysuckle–

The crunch of gravel underfoot reminds us
as we march head-held-high
into the blue sky days of it–

Nothing can last, there is no way to outrun it,
& tragedy, like just about everything else,
belongs to the rich, belongs to the mighty,
belongs to the right now famous, & powerful–

when one of them kicks off
there’s unabashed weeping
in the filthy grey streets,
enormous outpourings of
fanfare & support,
a grandiose parade,
a spectacle,
a lavish undertaking.

But people I know
die a little everyday
with but a few quiet tears
to solemnly usher them
onward, forward, everward,
until the sun is no more.
No one saymuch, does much,
mostly we’re just left to it,
to the simple, tedious going on of it,
we’re left to sort it out what we can
with the help of a few others
that knew, that cared.

Yes, nothing about how you or I die
will appear in election year political ads,
or a goddamned Ford truck commercial,
we won’t embody anything, personify anything,
there will be no narrative thread, no story of us,
hell, I’m not even sure it’ll really mean anything,
at the ashen & bony conclusion,
but living, truly living, & all that will cost you,
is far more tenuous than
just
dying,
far more hazardous,
more dangerous, &
true…
…but so much more necessary.

& sure, it’s ridiculous,
maybe even unfair,
that so much
unheralded & unrecognized
death slips past…

…but still it’s
probably
the best
way.

____

4 Drunken Poems by Hosho McCreesh

“Only fascists
drink white wine!”
you say, but still,
there you both are,
opening a bottle
you’ve found
in the garage.

“Fuck,” your buddy says,
“there’s really nothing else?”

“Not even cooking sherry,”
you joke.

And so there it goes,
down the hatch,
and it’s god-awful,
worse than you
had already
imagined.

“Good christ, it’s awful,”
you say, passing the bottle
to your buddy.

He takes a hero-pull,
then growls out of it,
and slams the bottle
down on the table.

You both nip at it a while
your younger brother
stares at you,
smiling.

And when the bottle’s
half gone, you say, “I
can’t do it, man.
I’m not drinking
another drop of
that poison.”

And your buddy is pissed,
and he soldiers on
out of spite
for the bottle,
out of spite
for Fascism, and
out of spite
for white wine,
and the world,
and you both end up
passed out on the
front porch.

And months later
your brother asks,
“Do you remember
that time you guys
were drinking?”

“Um,” you say, “you’ll need to
be a little more specific.”

“It was the night,” he says,
“you guys were drinking
a bottle with
vegetables
in it.”

What the shit? you think,
and then there’s a flash, you
pulling mustard and dill seeds,
and maybe a long strand
of celery string
from your
mouth.

“Dear god man,” you say,
“why the hell
didn’t you
stop us?”

And you’re brother says
“You looked like you
knew what you were
doing.”

“Goddammit,” you say,
“just for future reference:
if I am drinking
Mom’s homemade
vinegar,
I clearly have
no fucking idea
what I amdoing!”
but your brother is
laughing too hard
to actually pay
attention.

————————————

Leaving Us With Only That Which Is Truly Ours by Hosho McCreesh

Way down in it
like a blue-eyed jackdaw
gagging on his carrion
as the ugly world still
hurtles forth.

Today, at the library
a pederast knelt
filming the young legs of
doe-eyed giglets,
and startled from my
idiotic slumber
I realized that
we are, all of us,
everyday, being
hunted, stalked, and
measured by a
sinister and
unnamed tide.

Yes, there we stood,
nattering on like
skull-hammered sheep,
caught and baying in the
caperlash, convinced we
know some
damn
thing.

We have our notions, and
some kind of morality, sure,
we dream a god with a face
as white and dull as our own–
and somehow,
that’s enough.

But none of it is real,
none of it is ours,
not when the night drips
quiet as a cistern,
not when what’s left is
little more than
the  offscourings,
the rendered tallow,
the rotting giblets,
not when we jangle away
our lives like
last week’s
menavelings.

Only when we take the fash,
only when we we’re caught in the clutches
of a sulphured cumberworld
and our perceptions rejiggered,
only when we are stripped
of the fuffled mind are we
left to that
which is
truly
ours–

and that’s
dying

the one thing
we are given,

the one thing
we’ve been
practicing at
all these
years.

On the Strangest & Most Unexpected Nights… by Hosho McCreesh

Leaves dried up
and falling and
I’m caught hanging
in a lonesome night,
one spent wandering
past all the faces
I once knew,
and I tell myself that
I never knew them,
and they never knew me,
that we were just in
the same places
at the same time,
and that the things
we imagined between us
were not there–